U.S. UNIMPRESSED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 123, 27 May 1941, Page 7

U.S. UNIMPRESSED

CORDELL HULL'S REPLY

ROOSEVELT TO SPEAK

LONDON, May 26. The U.S. Secretary of State. Mr. Cordell Hull, today declared that the statements by Grand-Admiral Racder, coniinander-in-chief of the German navy, about the convoying of war materials to Britain, appeared to be some sort of threat to induce the United States to refrain from making a real effort in her own defence until Germany got

control of the high seas,

Mr. Hull pointed out that that was the system Hitler had used in the case of many European countries, to induce them to refrain from any real defence measures until he was ready to seize them. Mr. Hull also referred to German efforts at persuasion directed towards European countries, and tonight M. Laval employed the same tactics in a speech which the German radio described as his first public statement since his resignation from office.

M. Laval is reported to have said that since the United States could not help France during the war she was partly to blame for the French disaster. The German radio then went on to quoto M. Laval as warning the

M. Pierre Laval.

United States not to share the fate of France by plunging ' blindly into a great adventure. M. Laval argued that it was democracy that had harmed France so much, and said' France must collaborate with Germany. HITLER AS A BUILDER. He admitted that he knew that such collaboration astonished the United States, and went on to refer to Hitler as a victor who desired to be a constructor of a peaceful Europe rather than of a Germany expanded as the cost of her neighbours. He concluded by addressing the United States._ "Are you going to hinder our struggle to rise again?" he asked. "If i you tear a part of our empire from us j it would be as if you tore a part of our | living flesh. It is impossible, in the hour of our greatest defeat, that we should see your flag substituted for the Tricolour in far off lands." At the same time as M. Laval was making his speech it was announced in Washington that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. H. Morgenthau. is at present at sea inspecting U.S. Atlantic patrols. PRESIDENT'S BROADCAST. President Roosevelt's broadcast tomorrow evening; will be one of the most significant he has ever uttered. This description of the speech was given in Washington today by the President's secretary, Mr. Stephen Early. He told reporters that up to yesterday he would have repeated the warning given by Mr. Roosevelt that it must not be assumed that the speech would be momentous, but he went on to say that the President would be engaged all day and night and tomorrow revising the speech in the light of the rapidlychanging conditions abroad. In Chicago, Mr. W. S. Knudsen, head! of the Office of Production Management, today declared that the United States must match tank for tank and plane for plane with the aggressor nations. "By sheer weight of material we must get the upper hand or enable our friends to do so," he said. "Material and the ability to procure are the two biggest factors of this war.

"We have got them both," he declared, "and we have to take off our coats, join in the fray, and lick them."